Delaware historian honored for lifetime service

Carol Hoffecker, Richards Professor of History, has received many honors­including the Medal of Distinction, the Francis Alison Award, a named professorship, being named the Delaware Professor of the Year and induction into the Delaware Women's Hall of Fame­but she said receiving the first-ever College of Arts and Science Distinguished Lifetime Service Award during Homecoming Weekend last fall will always be a special memory.

"It was like Carol Hoffecker Day, and I was very touched," she said. The day started with a pre-game reception for her by the College of Arts and Science in the Delaware Field House with former students, her high school history teacher and countless friends and well-wishers in attendance.

The capstone was a black tie dinner that evening at Bayard Sharp Hall where she received the award for "32 years of exemplary and selfless service to the University of Delaware," with approximately 35 distinguished guests present, including John Munroe, H. Rodney Sharp Professor Emeritus of History, and Hoffecker's mentor since undergraduate days at UD. Also attending were members of the Richards family after whom her professorship is named, including U.S. Appeals Court Judge Jane Richards Roth, her husband, former U.S. Sen. William Roth and Robert H. Richards III, as well as UD administrators and others. In a spontaneous tribute to her, person after person rose and spoke about her during the evening.

Mark Huddleston, dean of the College of Arts and Science, noted that Carol Hoffecker's retirement "marks the passing of an era. Not only are the University and the state of Delaware losing our chronicler, but the University community will greatly miss the person to whom we've all turned for leadership in a pinch. She exemplifies the college's tradition of service, and we are very pleased to honor her with the College of Arts and Science Service Award."

When it came her turn to speak, Hoffecker announced she had bought some suitable attire for the occasion and donned a tiara she had picked up in England and flashing red and blue earrings from the Rockwood Ice Cream Festival, giving a typical Hoffecker touch to the proceedings.

To many, Hoffecker is the quintessential Delawarean. Born in Delaware, she is a graduate of Mt. Pleasant High School and UD, has been on the UD faculty for 30 years and has made the First State and the University the focus of her research and writing.

Her father was an alumnus and an avid Blue Hens football fan, and one of her early memories is driving down to the Newark campus for dinner with her parents at the age of 6, not realizing how large a role the University would later play in her life and career.

After graduation from UD, with the encouragement of Munroe and the late UD Prof. Eve Clift, Hoffecker attended graduate school at Radcliffe College and Harvard University. She taught at Northeastern University and Sweet Briar College, then returned to Delaware as a junior resident scholar at the Hagley Museum, She later headed the fellowship program at Hagley and taught courses at the University before joining the faculty full time in 1973.

As she gets ready to retire this year, Hoffecker said that one of the most important aspects of her career has been service to the University. She has served in many capacities and has played a pivotal role in promoting and clarifying the University's goals and mission.

She first served as vice president and then president of the Faculty Senate in the early 1980s and "learned about the University up close and how it functioned," she said, interacting with other colleges, the administration and trustees. "Overall, it was an enlightening and pleasant experience," she recalled.

Her next administrative post was chairing the history department from 1983-85. It was a demanding job, and she credits Marie Perrone, assistant to the chairperson who also is retiring this year, with helping her and others who held the position. "It was a good department, we worked harmoniously together, and it also was a time of change as several new faculty, such as Peter Kolchin, Anne Boylan and Suzanne Alchon came on board," she said.

From 1988 until June 1995, she served as associate provost for graduate studies, replacing Dick Murray, who became provost. 'I liked working with all the colleges, which are so different," she said.

One of her goals was to make the Office of Graduate Studies more collegial, and, to that end, she held different events for new graduate students, graduate secretaries across campus and for outstanding graduate students and their mentors who had received University grants. "The idea was to make everyone feel a part of the University community, and I would tell people at these get-togethers to talk to two people they didn't know, and they did," she said.

She returned to her research and writing in mid-1995. Then, as she recalled, "I naively made a suggestion at a meeting on freshman education," and found herself chairing an ad hoc Faculty Senate Committee on General Education. "It was a big responsibility chairing the committee, which represented all the colleges, while still teaching and writing, but I take pride in what was accomplished.

"Our goal was for students not to just check off a list of required courses, but to learn about and to take advantage of all that the University had to offer and to become educated persons.

"Most of the committee's recommendations were adopted, and the University is going forward," she said. She said it is important that every undergraduate participate in either study abroad programs, undergraduate research or internships, to see the relevance of what they are studying within the context of experience in the outside world. She said she also thinks the seminars or internships for seniors are valuable to complete their undergraduate experience and to learn about the ethics of their majors.

Teaching has been equally important to her, and Hoffecker said she has always enjoyed working with students. She has taught a variety of courses from a survey course on the history of the United States to women's history, urban history and an undergraduate seminar on the Civil War.

In demand as a public speaker throughout the state, she has spoken to innumerable organizations and groups and was the featured speaker at many annual Delaware Day banquets.

The books she has written also are a part of her legacy. "They are the part of you that stay behind," she commented. They reflect the breadth of her interests: Wilmington, Delaware, Portrait of an Industrial City: 1830-1900; Brandywine Village, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the 20th Century; Delaware: A Bicentennial History; Beneath Thy Guiding Hand: A History of Women at the University of Delaware; Familiar Relations: The du Ponts and the University of Delaware; Honest John Williams: U.S. Senator from Delaware; Federal Justice in the First State and Delaware, The First State for school-aged children.

Currently, she has been commissioned to write a history of the Delaware General Assembly. The book is a challenge, Hoffecker said, covering a time span from 1681, when Delaware was still part of Pennsylvania, to the present.

Now the time has come to "ratchet down," Hoffecker said. "I want to read books for enjoyment, travel and garden and make way for the next generation."

SUE MONCURE